SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 12/29/2020 12:52 PM
My Worship Time Focus: Intro to “Overcoming Worry”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Matthew
6:25-34
Message of the verses: “25 "For this
reason I say to you, do not be worried about your life, as to what you
will eat or what you will drink; nor for your body, as to what you will
put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? 26 “Look
at the birds of the air, that they do not sow, nor reap nor gather into barns,
and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not worth much more
than they? 27 “And who of you by being worried can add a single hour to
his life? 28 “And why are you worried about clothing? Observe how the lilies of
the field grow; they do not toil nor do they spin, 29 yet I say to you that not
even Solomon in all his glory clothed himself like one of these. 30 "But
if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and
tomorrow is thrown into the furnace, will He not much more clothe
you? You of little faith! 31 “Do not worry then, saying, ’What will we eat?’ or
’What will we drink?’ or ’What will we wear for clothing?’ 32 “For the Gentiles
eagerly seek all these things; for your heavenly Father knows that you need all
these things. 33 “But seek
first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to
you. 34 “So do not worry about tomorrow; for tomorrow will care for
itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.”
We
begin today with the last section in the sixth chapter of Matthew, and from the
title that John MacArthur gives to this section, it looks like a subject that
probably all of us need to consider and learn from.
In
the section that we just finished, Matthew 6:19-24, we saw that Jesus was
teaching us about our attitude toward luxury, the unnecessary physical
possessions that men store and stock-pile, and doing it for selfish reasons. Now in verses 25-34 we will be focusing on
the attitude toward what men eat, drink, and wear, which are the necessities of
life that they must have to be able to exist.
So the first was directed to the rich, which I must say is probably most
of the people who live in our country at this time, and the second is particularly
about the poor. Now some may think that
being rich does not have a lot of problems and being poor has a lot of
problems, but the truth is that there are problems with both the rich and the
poor. Rich people are tempted to rely on
their riches and therefore do not rely on the Lord, while the poor are tempted
to doubt God’s provision. “The rich are
tempted to become self-satisfied in the false security of their riches, and the
poor are tempted to worry and fear in the false security of their riches”
writes John MacArthur.
We
have already written about one can probably understand a lot about the
spirituality of a person by looking at his spending habits. Take a look at a person’s checkbook, or
credit cart statements and you can tell where he is spending his money, and
this will tell what kind of priorities that that person has. John MacArthur writes “Man as an earthly
creature is naturally concerned about earthly things. In Christ we are re-created as heavenly
beings and, as children of our heavenly Father, our concerns should now focus
primarily on heavenly things—even while we still live on earth. Christ sends us into the world to do His
work, just as the Father sent Him into the world to do the Father’s work. But we are not to be ‘of the world’ even as
Jesus Himself, while on earth, was ‘not of the world’ (John 17:15-18). One of the supreme tests of our spiritual
lives, then, is how we now relate to those two worlds. Sixteen of the thirty-eight parables of Jesus
deal with money. One out of ten verses
in the New Testament deals with that subject.
Scripture offers about five hundred verses on prayer, fewer than five
hundred on faith, and over two thousand on money. The believer’s attitude toward money and
possessions is determinative.”
We
want to stop here and allow this statement sink in as we think about it and
then Lord willing we will continue with this intro in our next SD.
12/29/2020 1:14 PM
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